Page 115 of Wicked Ends
The presentations started, and I zoned out, uninterested in any of this shit.
“Marcus Bailey,” Ari called from the front.
She smiled at me as I walked down the aisle to the front, and my heart twinged with regret before I forced it away. No. I neededto cut off the source of my weakness, and this was the only way. After this, she’d never smile at me like that again.
I clicked my presentation up on the screen, queued up the first slide, and started to talk. I didn’t care about my grade in this class anymore. I didn’t care about anything. Seeing Cole hurt and being betrayed by Ari had broken something inside me. Cold indifference surrounded my thoughts. I barely felt anything inside.
Ari was watching from the side of the room. I clicked to the next slide, the one I’d added this morning, and gasps ripped through the lecture hall.
It was a photo. In it, Ari was nearly naked, but not quite, sprawled in bed, the covers drawn up enough to hide her, and my tattooed hand gripping her ass. Her face was hidden, so people wouldn’t necessarily know it was her. It was one of the photos I’d taken that night I’d climbed into her friend’s house after following her home from the diner.
“Oops, wrong slide,” I said coolly and flicked to the next.
This one was her face, beautiful and serene, eyes closed peacefully and my hand, gripping her chin, my thumb between her lips. No one would know that she’d been asleep when I’d taken the photo. No one but me.
“Mr. Bailey!” Ari shot up and stormed toward me and the laptop.
I looked her dead in the eye. “Sorry, baby; wrong files, I guess.”
The whispers in the room raged like wildfire, igniting and spreading. I met Ari’s shocked gaze, taking the flash drive out of the laptop and tucking it into my pocket. Then I left. I couldn’ttake her look of betrayal for one more second. Not when she was the one who’d started it.
I got as far as the hallway before she reached me.
“Marcus! What the hell was that? Was it supposed to be funny?” Ari strode after me, somehow a tornado of wrath, despite her diminutive size.
“Yeah, wasn’t it?” I paused for only a second before continuing.
She tugged my arm, trying to make me stop, but I resisted. I didn’t want to see her hurt expression. I couldn’t stand it.
“Are you worried your breakfast buddy will hear about it?” I asked.
“What? I don’t understand. Make me understand, please,” she said, quieter now.
That coldness around my heart threatened to crack in half.
“It means we’re done. All of this between us is over. Got it?”
“What? Why?” she wondered, and then she laughed, a bitter, twisted thing. It sounded so wrong coming from her mouth. “I knew this would happen. I knew if I asked you to wait until being together didn’t fuck up my life, you wouldn’t last a month. And here you are… barely lasting a week.”
I turned around at that, anger breaking through my deliberate calm.
“I fucked your life up?” I demanded and closed in on her. “Say that again, I dare you.”
I grabbed her shoulders; I couldn’t help myself. The urge to touch her was too strong.
“I would have waited for you as long as you asked… gladly,” I murmured.
A tear ran down her cheek, and I wiped it away.
“But I don’t know you, Arianna Spencer, and clearly, I never did.”
Her face paled at the sound of her real name.
“What? How did you know…?” She blinked quickly, her clever mind trying hard to work out what the fuck had happened.
“Did you use me, birthday girl? Did you use me like everyone else in my fucking life has?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ari said softly. She was panicked, afraid. She was exposed. “Marcus?—”
